to get up. My thoughts seemed to be groping about for something to hold onto. I tried to visualize the coming day with the sets down and the boat rolling slowly on the long swells, or May leaning back in the shadow of the wheelhousesmoking his pipe, or maybe dozing a bit. But all I could see was the chart with its myriad symbols and long curving lines marking out the seaward edges of these silent black terraces that descended ever deeper into the abyssal gloom.
No sound came from above; no doubt May was sitting on the hatch baiting the hooks, getting himself ready for another big catch, possibly half again what was already in the hold. My stomach tightened unpleasantly. I found myself hoping, almost desperately, that the sharks had disappeared and nothing was left on the bottom but green sand and crabs.
Suddenly I wished Iâd never seen a shark, that livers and Vitamin A, my tantalizing dream of wealth and especially May, with his shrewdly calculated deal, had never existed. But despite my wish, I could not rid myself of the shadowy forms that kept twisting and turning in the murky depths of my consciousness.
Goddamn May and his lousy deal! And there was no way out of it, nothing to do all day but pull in Mayâs sharks and watch him get richer. The tightness in my stomach spread to my chest. My throat constricted. Tears welled up in my eyes. And all the while May, serene in his self-detachment and childlike simplicity, was up there on the deck probably smoking his pipe in the fading starlight, completely oblivious to my suffering.
Or was he?
Slowly, and deep in my mind, eerie thoughts began to take shape. Who was this Ethan May, I asked myself. He was weird but honest, was all the buyer had said. And he lived alone. But where alone with no address but a P.O. box and no home or family that he ever mentioned? Where had he come from with those just bought sea boots and a brand new fishing license? How had he known where the sharkswould be and that a storm was coming? And where would he go when he left with all his money? The questions came rapidly like an interrogation I sensed was moving, inexorably, toward some ominous disclosure I did not want to know about. What if that mysterious deal of Mayâs were not the long shot gamble it appeared to be or May, himself, the honest fisherman the buyer had claimed he was?
A creeping feeling came over me as tales told to me in childhood by that ancient, godfearing grandmother of mine emerged from the misty recesses of my mind, whispered accounts of mysterious strangers, Godâs secret agents, who wandered eternally over the byways and through the out-lands of the earth searching out the evil in menâs souls, of how they tempted the wicked with visions of gold and precious jewels to expose the greed in their hearts.
Of course all this was pure nonsense, I tried to tell myself, nothing more than an old womanâs fears venting themselves in primitive superstitions. But my breathing had slowed almost to a stop and my whole body felt suddenly hollow. Nervously I spread the fingers of one hand on the table as if to find in it some evidence of my innocence. The hand, unwashed since the morning before, was dark with accumulated grime. A thin crust of dried sharkâs blood still clung to the sides of the fingernails. For a moment I could not accept it as my own. Then slowly, and for the first time, it occurred to me that my hands had always been dirty, grubby and sticky as a child and never quite clean as an adult. In its sordidness, my outspread hand seemed somehow to reflect the values and aspirations, the sickly hopes and dreams I had always lived by.
Suddenly, and with the ineluctable clarity of a revelation, my whole life rose up before me, a bleak montage of fears and failures, of self-deceit and rationalizations, offantasies of ill-gotten wealth and of whimpering self-pity. And coiled in the depths of this spiritual morass I could see quite clearly the
No sound came from above; no doubt May was sitting on the hatch baiting the hooks, getting himself ready for another big catch, possibly half again what was already in the hold. My stomach tightened unpleasantly. I found myself hoping, almost desperately, that the sharks had disappeared and nothing was left on the bottom but green sand and crabs.
Suddenly I wished Iâd never seen a shark, that livers and Vitamin A, my tantalizing dream of wealth and especially May, with his shrewdly calculated deal, had never existed. But despite my wish, I could not rid myself of the shadowy forms that kept twisting and turning in the murky depths of my consciousness.
Goddamn May and his lousy deal! And there was no way out of it, nothing to do all day but pull in Mayâs sharks and watch him get richer. The tightness in my stomach spread to my chest. My throat constricted. Tears welled up in my eyes. And all the while May, serene in his self-detachment and childlike simplicity, was up there on the deck probably smoking his pipe in the fading starlight, completely oblivious to my suffering.
Or was he?
Slowly, and deep in my mind, eerie thoughts began to take shape. Who was this Ethan May, I asked myself. He was weird but honest, was all the buyer had said. And he lived alone. But where alone with no address but a P.O. box and no home or family that he ever mentioned? Where had he come from with those just bought sea boots and a brand new fishing license? How had he known where the sharkswould be and that a storm was coming? And where would he go when he left with all his money? The questions came rapidly like an interrogation I sensed was moving, inexorably, toward some ominous disclosure I did not want to know about. What if that mysterious deal of Mayâs were not the long shot gamble it appeared to be or May, himself, the honest fisherman the buyer had claimed he was?
A creeping feeling came over me as tales told to me in childhood by that ancient, godfearing grandmother of mine emerged from the misty recesses of my mind, whispered accounts of mysterious strangers, Godâs secret agents, who wandered eternally over the byways and through the out-lands of the earth searching out the evil in menâs souls, of how they tempted the wicked with visions of gold and precious jewels to expose the greed in their hearts.
Of course all this was pure nonsense, I tried to tell myself, nothing more than an old womanâs fears venting themselves in primitive superstitions. But my breathing had slowed almost to a stop and my whole body felt suddenly hollow. Nervously I spread the fingers of one hand on the table as if to find in it some evidence of my innocence. The hand, unwashed since the morning before, was dark with accumulated grime. A thin crust of dried sharkâs blood still clung to the sides of the fingernails. For a moment I could not accept it as my own. Then slowly, and for the first time, it occurred to me that my hands had always been dirty, grubby and sticky as a child and never quite clean as an adult. In its sordidness, my outspread hand seemed somehow to reflect the values and aspirations, the sickly hopes and dreams I had always lived by.
Suddenly, and with the ineluctable clarity of a revelation, my whole life rose up before me, a bleak montage of fears and failures, of self-deceit and rationalizations, offantasies of ill-gotten wealth and of whimpering self-pity. And coiled in the depths of this spiritual morass I could see quite clearly the
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